Mary Shelley was born in 1797 to two famous parents: philosopher and writer William Godwin, and Mary Wollstonecraft, author of Vindication of the Rights of Woman. She was to lead a life plagued by family and marital problems, and was often the subject of scandal.
At a young age she became involved in an affair with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, whom she met through her father. Percy Shelley was married at the time they met, however shortly after his wife died they eloped in 1814. They had one surviving son, whom she was devoted to and tried to assist him to advance in life, but felt that gossip surrounding her always held her son back. She suffered depression in her later years and died of a brain disease in 1851. She was never particularly wealthy, despite a good yearly maintenance from Percy Shelley’s family for the upkeep of their son. She held a lifelong sympathy for the poor.
Mary Shelley was very conscious of her literary background, and felt that her husband’s literary reputation overshadowed hers. In the introduction to Frankenstein, her most famous work, she writes: “My husband, however, was from the first very anxious that I should prove myself worthy of my parentage and enrol myself on the page of fame”.
On a visit to Switzerland in the summer of 1816, the Shelleys were neighbours with Lord Byron and his friend Polidori. They challenged each other to write a horror story, and Frankenstein (1818) is the result of a dream Shelley subsequently had that evening. Frankenstein is the story of the creature created by Victor Frankenstein - the artificial creation of human beings was a popular topic at the time Frankenstein was written. Shelley’s novel is a macabre and Romantic tale of a monster in an alien world who wishes to escape solitude. The monster is looking for companionship and desires to love and be loved. When the monster does not find any kind of attachment and is rejected by his creator, Frankenstein, he becomes destructive.
Shelley wrote several other novels which are only recently receiving recognition (for example Valperga (1823) and The Last Man (1826), but is clearly best known for Frankenstein, particularly through the several film adaptations of the novel. Shelley’s work bridges the Romantic and Victorian periods, and contains an interest in political and gender issues. Her work reveals contrary views on women: she sees women as pure and sensitive, yet weaker than men.
Frankenstein describes his creation as it comes to life: